> The prevailing culture in large city public schools turns those ideas on their head. The focus is on individual self-actualization, and questioning authority, hierarchy, and norms. It’s about what society owes individuals (“rights”) instead of what individuals owe society. There’s a veneer of cooperation and obligation, but it’s framed in terms of what “privileged” (whites, the rich) owe everyone else, not what each individual owes society.
This is a pundit's warped idea of what a public school looks like. I was in a public high school not too long ago (one that was and is 60% first-generation Americans), and never at any point did I get the sense (or to this day feel) like my education was intended to make me feel asymmetrically entitled.
And again: there's a sense in which this is far more true for private and home schooling, where the entire point is to eliminate the mutual network of obligations that exist between students, their parents, and the public's interest in favor of private, religious, or sectarian interests.
And that's why you home-school: you don't want the education that your children receive depend on the school's choice of the teacher for your child.
Could public schools be better? Yes, absolutely. We do not fund them enough, the fact that so many of my friends send their kids to private schools despite the enormous cost is testament to that. I have leaned on private schools myself for pre-K, transitional K, and earlier because its support is quite spotty across the USA.
"averages out" - No, it may not.
I had the same teacher for 4th and 6th grade in elementary school. I thought she was great. A friend of mine _changed schools_ so she wouldn't have the teacher again, because the teacher had been verbally abusive to her. I never saw it, but it was a big deal to her.
A year later, I had a teacher who would _publicly_ ridicule and harass me. Sure, I only had to deal with that for one class and homeroom everyday for TEN MONTHS, no big deal, right?
My other teachers weren't like that. But one is enough.
My anecdotal experience as a parent is that there are far more teachers like that now. (The students are often worse, too, which may be one factor.) To write off abuse from a) persons in authority and b) government employees as "oh the kids will get over it" isn't just wrong, it's demeaning.
That is a very bizarre fantasy that sounds like something a Fox News talking head that has never been within 2000 feet of a public school would say.
And what does Fox News have to do with anything?
The protest can mean a lot of things, including the dress code itself being against the norms of the community. One does not need to focus on questioning authority to protest bad decisions.
Also, I am not American.
What does that have to do with anything? Some dress codes are truly stupid, to the point they are literally ignored by both teachers and students. Which is just our chosen way to deal with it, usually. When there is clash, dress code violation is typically seen as something minor, so no reason to protest when you can kinda ignore it.
Frankly, organizing protest is so much work, that kids in your story come across as active people who take governance seriously.
In a superficial way, sure. The dominant American culture is intensely individualist. So if you don’t want your kids to grow up that way, you need to buck conformity in that narrow sense.
> If your goal is to instill values of mutual cooperation, a sense of obligation, etc. in a pluralistic society, I'd think that you'd want to send them to a public school in a large city.
The prevailing culture in large city public schools turns those ideas on their head. The focus is on individual self-actualization, and questioning authority, hierarchy, elders, and norms. It’s about what society owes individuals (“rights”) instead of what individuals owe society. There’s a veneer of cooperation and obligation, but it’s framed in terms of what “privileged” (whites, the rich) owe everyone else, not what each individual owes society.